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It’s not a bit like the Walton’s (it’s not like Eastender’s either), a performance (2010) brings together many of these concerns though an exploration of the tension between the Ideal Family that is still promoted by both state and media and our lived experience of the complexity and diversity of human relationships.

As so often with my work, the idea grew out of personal experience. My own family is typical, with blood ties, adoptions, divorce, step families and live in partners complicating the somehow still expected two parents, 2.4 children and various grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins (though even the Ideal Family is a far from a simple organism). All of us bound together by an assortment of emotions from love and friendship to habit and shared experience.

The crib, in which my own children had once slept, relegated to the back of a garage and with its various screws and bolts missing, struck me as an interesting metaphor for the way we try to build family connections and then work to keep them together. In a rich and diverse culture nothing can be taken for granted. Couples are male and female in any combination as are parents. Children are adopted, fostered or created with or without the intervention of medical technology. Siblings are full, half or step related and all these variations and more I haven’t mentioned, come together as families that love and fight and hate and forgive. No, family is definitely not a bit like The Walton’s!

Beginning as an installation the work has evolved over time as my research helped to mature and clarify my thoughts. The political promise to reward marriage through taxation drew my attention to the way the establishment continued to support a kind of Platonic Ideal that is no longer the only viable pattern. In a society that promotes consumer choice, it seems that not all choices have equal value. Working through several variations I finally realised that just as family building is an activity that happens in real time, I needed to express my ideas through an active rather than a static medium.

During the performance of It’s not a bit like The Walton’s…, the artist is seen sitting amongst various domestic items and crib components. Instructions, a template for what the crib should look like when completed and how it should be built is close at hand. As she begins to assemble the various parts it soon becomes obvious that there are items missing and that she must find substitutes or improvise new ways of making connections. Several times the construction falls apart and she must start again. Finally, she has a stable crib of sorts. Gently checking that the structure is more or less stable, she sits back, content until the moment when it will be necessary to begin again or make repairs or replace a fraying element.

An interesting and important quality of performance is the difficulty of repeating the same action in an identical manner to arrive at an identical result. Each time a performance is given the end result will be something subtly or even markedly different, even though the performer begins with the same template and the same materials.

The last few months have been exciting, stimulating and frustrating. I invested so much time and research into my crib piece that some version of it would have to be my degree show exhibit. Yet as deadlines crept ever closer it seemed that a resolution moved further out of reach. For weeks I felt close to…something…that I could not quite grasp. Like a word on the tip of your tongue or the lingering edges of a dream when you first wake up. With each construction my understanding of what it was I wanted to articulate became clearer but the means of doing so continually eluded me.

I had, up until this point, been working with the disassembled parts of the crib. Now I began to look at methods of assembly. Experimenting with found domestic materials as substitutes for the missing nuts and bolts, I was still thinking of the finished product in terms of an installation or sculptural object. Pleased with the appearance and the way string, tape and wool, amongst other things seemed to echo the way family connections are made and held together in a haphazard, whatever is necessary way, I wrote my proposal. Ignoring the nagging reservations at the back of my mind.

A last minute tutorial with a new (to me) tutor brought my anxieties to the surface and helped me to put words to some vague thoughts that had been chasing around my mind. I began to consider adding a video to the installation. The video would be a recording of the crib being assembled. The more I thought about it the more I came to realise that it was the act of putting it together that was central rather than the object.

I wrote the video into the final proposal, still imagining that it would be a small addition that would lead the viewer to the main piece – the crib – which would be presented in a dark space lit with one spotlight.

My mobility restrictions meant that I could not film until I had arranged some help. This worked well as Geoff Berrow not only carried equipment and helped to rig the set, but as an experienced camera operator and video maker was able to offer invaluable advice.

I decided to film in a dark space with one fixed camera. The scene was back lit with some fill being provided from the side.

As soon as the camera began to roll and I began to construct the crib my plans for the degree show changed. I immediately realised that it was the activity of construction that was the work, not the object. Performance was able to provide the means of expressing my thoughts in a way that my previous installation attempts had failed to do. A look at the raw footage confirmed my thoughts.

The final version was edited very little. This was not intended to be video art, but a straight record of a performance. If I had had the time to experiment I would have used two cameras and edited the footage together to give a more varied view of the action.

I am not altogether happy with presenting my work as a video for assesment and the degree show as the static nature of the medium does not fully express my intentions. However I failed to get the required permission to present it as a performance piece. I do intend to look for opportunities to perform It’s not a bit like The Walton’s (and it’s not like Eastender’s, either) after graduation.

One of the unintended consequences of moving from a sculptural installation to a recorded performance at such a late stage is that my I now hate the photograph that I chose to illustrate my work in the degree show catalogue. It represents a version that had yet to evolve into something more although I did not know it at the time.

I have heard the creating of art compared with giving birth. A comparison that sounds good at first glance but that really does not stand up to scrutiny. As far as I know, no woman, after going through pregnancy and child birth has ever heard a midwife say

I can’t sleep tonight, despite being so tired that my eyes keep closing without consulting me first. Yet although my body wants to close down for the night, my mind has other ideas. If it is not doing re-runs of todays events its off gathering random thoughts from dark places.

Meanwhile a small voice is whispering doubts into my ear.

Why am I putting myself through this? Is it worth it? Whatever made me think I could do this?

They are, or course, rhetorical questions that I will have forgotten about next week or perhaps even tomorrow. But for tonight, after a bad day, they keep me awake and wondering why I didn’t chose to study something that has clear cut answers and does not rely on the subjective judgements of others.

If there is such a thing. (Only this evening someone told me that 2 +2 is not necessarily 4 as I had always belived, but can sometimes be 3.)

I am still stressing about the ‘It’s not a bit like the Waltons’ piece. Or rather I have returned to stressing about it after a brief delusion that I had reached a resolution and produced something I was pleased with. Having previously suffered from this particular delusion, I should have known better.

This week has been our Interim exhibition and there has been some very interesting work shown. I have really enjoyed seeing the various directions taken by my colleagues and speculating on the possible shape of our final exhibition.

Today was my groups seminar. Although I was nervous about showing the latest incarnation of the ‘Walthons’, I was also convinced that I had ‘cracked it’ so to speak.

It received, what I can only describe as a ‘mixed reception’. The comments from my peers were generally positive . Sometimes in the past I have had a problem with ‘activting’ my work. It has needed me to explain or to give some kind of background information. This was not the case today. I was pleased with the responses and interested in the new or extrapolated readings, possibilities that I had not been aware of. Especially as at least two of the audience had no previous knowledge of my work so were looking at it with fresh eyes.

So far so good. Just as I began to relax…

I can’t remember either of the two tutors present saying even one positive thing. Every comment was about completely changing what I had done. One of them has previously been interested in my use of text and especially lists. Today one of them dismissed the text completely and wanted it got rid of entirely. Gone was all the previous discussions of ‘integration’ and the talk was all of ‘sculptural form’. I feel utterly demoralised.

“So what’s important to you? The object or the text? How wedded are you to the combination?’ … or words to that effect … spoken by a fellow student during a self directed seminar.

Damn!

I have to make a decision?

I have to make a decision.

The text of course.

An immediate response easily made because the meaning (meaning? my meaning? the viewers meaning?), resides in the words that were being projected on to and behind the object.

So the object is extraneous?

Maybe.

Yes.

No!

The object is…

something else?

Are there two pieces of work here that I am trying to combine? Like a marriage that should work according to the facts but hasn’t take the individuals feelings into account.

I’m rambling.

I think.

Or maybe I think? Out loud? Out line? On line?

I don’t like lines very much. At least not straight ones, except when…but that’s another story.

Back to this story.

I suspect this is fundamentally about my practise. About what it is, or might become. Am I an installation artist? An artist who works with text? with sculpture?

Am I an artist?

What is an artist?

Does it matter what I call myself? How I am defined?

How I am defined? or how my work is defined? An interesting slip of the pen.

Again, back to the subject. This work. A work that keeps growing and shrinking and gobbling up ideas both serious and whimsical.

It began with the parts of a rocking crib laid out on the floor in my studio space. Moving them around like a jigsaw puzzle I fell in love with the shapes and the texture and the possibilities of shadow.

Then came the phrase. A title. ‘It ‘s not a bit like the Waltons’. A wry comment. Tongue in cheek? It’s not like East Enders either. Family life. Families.

Next came the list. There is almost always a list! Social comment?

At Christmas I projected the list on to the crib.

Maybe something. More work definitely needed.

Arranging and rearranging the seperate parts has been fascinating and intriguing. The way they related to each other. The spaces in and out and in between. How together, they create a brand new whole.

Now, I project the words and I am left with a restless feeling. A split in my intentions.

Social comment?

Pleasure in the …. objectness? … of the sculpture?

Which leads me back to the seminar I mentioned at the beginning. We talked of instructions and leaflets. Of multiples available to be taken away by visitors.

I designed and printed a leaflet.

Next week is our Interim10 exhibition, which is what I have been working towards. Yesterday I brought my leaflet to another seminar.

Michelle Hunter-Gray is an artist who works in mediums ranging from photography and performance to found objects. She often uses both text and humor to make sly comment on society. Â She is particularly interested in the experience of middle-aged womenÂ in a society dominated by a youth obsessed media and consumerism aimed at a 15 to 25 demographic.